Drunks with Guns: You Loot, We Shoot

After riots swept parts of the United Kingdom last year, I wrote about the moral argument for gun ownership. Simply stated, it is wrong to disarm law-abiding people, particularly when there is a risk of societal breakdown.

The same argument is equally applicable in the areas ravaged by the recent storm to hit the northeastern United States. As you can see from this report in the New York Post, the government is failing in its responsibility to provide law and order.

Hardened New Yorkers are ready to battle lowlife criminals to protect their homes and stores in storm-ravaged areas plagued by looting and break-ins. In Coney Island, several residents were loading up their guns, sharpening their machetes and brandishing other deadly weapons. Jacinto Gonzalez, 42, picked up a baseball bat and stood guard outside his two-story rowhouse on West 27th Street near Neptune Avenue with his family. Another Coney Island resident, Roberto Aviles, brandishing a rusty 3-foot machete and warning he has a gun, who has lived in Coney Island since 1995 with his wife, says he’s ready to take on phony burglars posing as Con Ed workers. “I’m prepared inside here,” the 76-year-old Aviles said, showing off his rusted, three-foot machete and warning he had a gun. Chris Lane, a 50-year-old resident of the Coney Island Houses, put together a small arsenal with his double pump action gun.

And here’s some coverage from the United Kingdom

…residents of the Rockaways in Queens continued to struggle without power, heat or food for a sixth day as their neighborhood slowly descended into chaos.